


Waves

by Trash



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: AU, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 21:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: Dan and Kyle are sinking, until they’re not.





	Waves

_Wave after wave, wave after wave  
I'm slowly drifting_

Eivissa is hot, packed with tourists admiring the yachts that line the harbour and looking at the beautiful architecture through their phone screens. 

Dan tunes his guitar carefully, eyes fixed on the strings. The sun burns the back of his neck so he swings his cap round to try and protect it with the peak. The heat is almost unbearable at this time of day, but it’s when the square is the busiest. Beggars, as they say, can’t be choosers. 

He strums one last time with a flourish and clears his throat, starts to sing. He starts with Wild World by Cat Stevens, and people slow down to listen. He learned quickly that original music doesn’t work. People want something familiar. Covers, then. And it’s fine, really. Not like there’s not enough beautiful music out there for him to perform. 

There’s a crowd by the time he moves onto City High, and there’s a decent amount of change in his open guitar case by the time he’s onto one of the many generic songs that have been dubbed summer anthems. He listens to the radio, keeps up with the chart. Wallpaper music with no original features. They were made to be covered by a busker in busy town square. 

He changes what he plays at night. Kyle’s suggestion, and it makes sense. Drunk people stagger out of clubs and into the street to dance by the moonlight, his guitar and his voice lifting above the chatter. 

It’s romantic. Or it would be. If they weren’t being robbed. 

Kyle, with his lithe fingers and quick feet. Garish shirts with loud print because nobody actually remembers those people. It’s the quiet ones. Later, as they pat down their pockets, they’ll ask one another if they remember that guy. You know, the one wearing black. Yeah, he was really shifty, bet it was him. 

They won’t mention Kyle in his Justin Bieber vest or his cat print button down. And eventually they’ll forget altogether. It could have happened anywhere. They were warned, after all. Pick pockets are everywhere, only nobody ever thinks it’s going to happen to them. 

So once the crowd is large enough Kyle appears. As people shower Dan with loose change, Kyle slips his fingers into their pockets and takes whatever he can find. Rolls of notes, wallets. Never phones. That was Dan’s rule. What if something happens and they need to call someone, he had asked. And Kyle had laughed, kissed him, called him soft. 

Kyle never stayed for the full set, and they never met up anywhere near where Dan had performed. Dan suspects shop keepers and bar tenders know, have seen it happen. Nobody ever says anything, though. Six euros for a beer and tatty ornaments bought in bulk and sold on for ten times the price, you have to wonder who is actually robbing the tourists here. 

Things were different, once. They both earned an honest living. Home was a mattress on the floor of a room generously dubbed a studio apartment. The shower was in the kitchen, and the toilet was behind a partition wall in the living room. London, this was. And their rent was astronomical and their jobs were monotonous. Office jobs with cubicles and politics and bullshit. Dark winters that stretched on for too long, rain that fell too often. 

They’d talked about escaping. Just leaving it all behind. “And do what?” Dan had asked. 

“Anything,” Kyle had said. “We could do anything if we wanted to. Don’t you want to?”

“Of course I do,” Dan would say. But he was scared. He was miserable, and trapped, and the antidepressants weren’t working anymore. The thoughts of flinging himself onto the Tube tracks came to him on his commute to and from work more often now, and he told Kyle as much. 

Then one day Kyle said, “I quit my job. We’re leaving. Get your passport, pack a bag.”

Dan did as he was told. Partly because that’s how he operated now because the depression had robbed him of any autonomy. But mostly because he trusted Kyle, loved him. He still isn’t sure which of those things scare him the most. 

They flew to Magaluf, first. Honest enough jobs doing honest enough things, but the money was shit and the hours were terrible and all that had really changed was he temperature. Then one day Dan saw a guy doing card tricks by the beach for tourists. He didn’t charge, but people were always so wowed by him that they’d drop money in the plastic cup by his feet. 

Dan watched him every day from the bar he and Kyle worked in. Crowds would gather, sweaty and packed together. And then the girl would appear. 

She had pastel coloured hair and tattoos covering every inch of her arms. She would wind her way carefully through the crowd to get to the front and watch. And by the time she had gotten there her pockets would be heavy with other people’s money. 

Dan caught her eye one day and she looked at him, surprised. Then she smiled, pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and winked. Sleight of hand, all of it. And after that Dan didn’t see them again. 

He told Kyle, who laughed. “Fucking genius,” he had said, his laughter dying down when the penny dropped. “Neither of us can do magic.”

“You can juggle,” Dan suggested.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Kyle said. 

The guitar came from a flea market in Barcelona, and Dan taught himself quickly enough. He’d always hated playing guitar, preferred piano or keyboard. Guitar strings hurt his fingers. Soft, Kyle reminded him. 

Soon enough he was busking on street corners, outside cafés, on the board walk, in town squares. Anywhere he could he would drop his open guitar case and sing. And Kyle would wind carefully through the crowd. Sleight of hand. Whoever said they couldn’t do magic?

Now home is Ibiza. For now. A tent pitched in the shade of an ancient tree in a camp site on the beach. The money pays for their battered car, the one with a different coloured door to the rest of the body, and a huge dent in the back. It pays for their pitch and their food and their weed and beer. Dan wishes he felt bad, but it’s hard to. He used to work for a bank, so he’s entirely too used to robbing people. 

When they get back to the site the bar has closed and the strings of fairy lights in the trees have gone out. They kick off their shoes and head to the beach bare foot. The sea looks black at this time of night, and the sound of it rushing to the shore is all there is to hear. The smell of the seaweed, the sand still warm beneath his toes. Dan squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. 

“You okay, babe?” Kyle asks, hand sliding into Dan’s. 

“Just happy,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Kyle says, the smile evident in his voice. 

And they stand there hand in hand, as the tide does its thing, and the moon shines on the water. And the Dan who wanted to kill himself seems so far away, so different. And he remembers Kyle telling him they could do anything they wanted. And here they are. 

Here they are.


End file.
